SXSW 2014: Making the Right Moves

Director Alex R. Johnson and his cast talk about new Austin flick Two Step

By Sarah Thurmond

Published: March 14, 2014

James Landry Hébert as con artist Webb in Two Step

Photo courtesy South by Soutwest

Texas films always have a special place at the South by Southwest Film Festival. This year’s crop was particularly strong, with the lineup ranging from first-time director Jeffrey Radice's No No: A Dockmentary, about baseball pitcher Dock Ellis, to Richard Linklater’s epic coming-of-age flick Boyhood, to small, low-budget flicks like Two Step, which was written and directed by another first-time director, Alex R. Johnson, and shot last year in Austin.

Two Step stars Skyy Moore as James, a young man who, when his grandmother dies, becomes an unintentional victim in a plot to scam money out of senior citizens. James Landry Hébert (who has appeared on Treme, Mob City and The Tomorrow People) plays Webb, the ex-con who kidnaps James in a home invasion gone wrong when he tries to recoup money that his girlfriend (Ashley Spillers) stole from him. Rounding out the cast is Beth Broderick (Sabrina the Teenage Witch) as concerned neighbor Dot and Jason Douglas as the head of the scam.

Johnson, who lived 18 years in New York City, says he was inspired to write the script after hearing about these money scams involving older people on shows like 20/20 and after moving to Austin in 2012. “In New York, if you live in an apartment, there’s usually a heavy outside door, an inside door, and then a vestibule, and then you go upstairs to your apartment, where there’s your door,” he says. “But in Texas, there’s just one door to your house. So the aspect of a home invasion and how real the potential is for that to happen got the story going.” With the basic concept already in his head, he says he turned out the script pretty fast.

Setting it in Texas, Johnson sought help from others to make sure he was being as authentic as possible. He turned to his friend Andrew Kenny, a native Texan who not only scored the film, but who read the script through a Texan’s eyes. His first note to the filmmaker was to change Dot from saying “sugar” to “honey.” “And I told him to change ‘over at Baylor’ to ‘up at Baylor,’” Kenny says.

As for the cast, Johnson populated his story with local actors. With the exception of Hébert, who grew up in Louisiana, all cast members call or have called the Lone Star State home, including Broderick, who has lived most of her career in Los Angeles and bought a home in Austin three years ago.

When Broderick first moved to the capital city, she got a part on the short-lived series Lone Star. More recently she was seen on Revolution. She also enjoys performing shows at the ZACH Theatre. “It’s really different performing for audiences that are happy you’re here,” she says. “They write handwritten letters to the theater. Nobody does that in L.A. Nobody gives a sh*t that you did a play in L.A., but here it’s really meaningful to people.” When it came to Two Step, she was happy to find a director who, despite being a first-timer, had his act together. “I knew when I read the script that Alex knew what he was doing,” she says, adding that she appreciated his including an older woman who was not only integral to the story, but who wasn’t your typical female character of a certain age. “Especially a woman my age who is not totally old, but not young anymore, we just don’t exist on celluloid. I was attracted to the role for that reason,” she says.

As for the sinister tone of the movie, a lot of credit goes to Hébert, who makes Webb both charming and evil. In fact, during the home invasion scene when Webb savagely beats up a defenseless James, Hebert is so effectively brutal as the ex-con it’s hard to watch. “Alex was pretty adamant that Webb have these moments of explosions, these moments where he lashes out,” the actor says. “There were a couple times that I went into crazy mode and accidentally nicked Skyy a few. He was such a trooper about it, but I felt so horrible.”

The film, which premiered this week at SXSW, is already receiving good notices, with Variety critic Geoff Berkshire noting that “there’s not a bum performance in the bunch.” See if you can catch it at the fest. But if you miss it (with it being a small, indie flick, distribution may be hard to find), and it doesn’t end up in theaters or on Netflix, there’s no doubt you’ll be seeing more from Johnson and the rest of this talented group of artists in Two Step.